First, a few clean-up items:
1) The Navy won 2 out of 3, the best 'our side' has ever done. We then went on to play many many more games, from 3-on-3 to 6-on-6, and drank many beers with them. An excellent time, and a great Spanish lesson.
2) The next day we played the "employees" of the restaurant at which the games were held at (none of the players worked there), and got slaughtered 2 games to zilch. However, later, during the following hours of games and drinking, we had a match of 4-on-4, a strong four on both sides, with a wager - proposed by them - for the losers to go swimming in the ocean. We won handily.
3) Our public has spoken, and the font for Rumiko is Font #4 (see our previous posting for an example). This is the theory, anyway. We'll see how it turns out when Lisa actually tries to paint Rumiko in that font.
Now on to the main part of our life here - the Bercovich Boat Yard (Talleres Navales Bercovich).
Luckily, in a way we did not understand at first, our boat is located in a fully working - hard core Mexican Talleres Navales. They do good bottom work, so we will have them do the sand blast and bottom paint on Rumiko. We are right next to the roofed, un-walled, shop, two boats from the office, and are not close to the large gringo community living on their boats down the other end of the yard. Despite the toxic fumes emanating from the shop, our location has turned out to be a really good thing. The gringo community in the yard is composed mainly of talkers who work a bit, rather than the other way around. Also, we are next to the shop so we get the full shop experience (watching a master-of-all-trades do hard core welding, grinding, polishing, without ever wearing any protective gear like masks or glasses - even for welding), and our boat and tools are extremely safe.
While I just slandered the crowd of us-like folks, there are actuall
y some really neat people based here in the Bercovich yard. A lot of colorful folks, living lives that they have chosen - or at least they have chosen NOT to live the lives that were most evident for them. I am not sure anyone chooses to live in a boat yard. There is a grumpy old conservative that loves to shock folks with his bad taste humor and slanderous politics; there is the nice guy that bops around, living on his small boat then off to some friends in various Mexican villages; the woman that inherited 
the boat her brother died working on, and subsequently moved down and is slowly putting it together. There's also Eric, a kindred soul, Grand Canyon river guide for many years who is in a race with us to get his boat in the water - and who not only has great stories, but tells them extremely well. We'll write more about Eric in another posting. For us, Doug, the previous caretaker of our boat, great husband to Rae (who is great as well), and wealth of information, inspiration, humor, and all-too-many gifts (all which we are either in need of or glad to receive), is physically the closest to our boat, and now to our lives as well.
The yard is owned by Abel Bercovich. Abel is known as an honest and reliable man who runs a competent working boat yard.
He has a very dry sense of humor, and rarely shows that he is aware of our existence. He has two brothers that also work there, Eduardo being the "working boss" of the crew. He shares the quiet manner, but to less extent, and has been very helpful with a number of projects that we needed assistance with. Christen is a young quiet man who works in the tool shop and does various odd jobs; Angel (who helped with o
ur propeller removal - see earlier post for his picture) and another guy seem to be the two most skilled general workers. Roberto is an older man that works some in the shop - but seems to be semi-retired. Then there is the primary shop guy - I would guess in his mid-fifties, that works without any protective gear as explained above. Vincente is the night and weekend watchman, lives in the yard, and is very friendly. In addition, there are another 3 to 5 workers that are less frequently seen in our area.
You may wonder what we are doing. . . well, the boat was is great shape, but still we have been working 4- to 9-hours-a-day for most of the past month (6 to 7 days-a-week). Cleaning - there was a bachelor hermit living on the boat for a year and a half - so that was a chunk. The various cushions - for sitting on and sleeping - needed cleaning or replacing. The bilge (the pit where all the gunk in a boat goes - gunk being a polite term) was cleaned and painted, as was the engine compartment. Lots of tracing electrical wires, removing some, redoing others, rerouting a lot. Painting this and that. Building the settee (couch) extension, so that our bed will be bigger (as wide as possible - the Sea of Cortez in the heat of the summer is known as the celibisea - "don't you dare get closer to me"). . . All of this is taking place in tighter-than-tight spots (requiring contortionist yoga - as Eric puts it), and requiring real care (it is a corrosive and wet environment that will bounce around hard on the water, and may go inverted).
We are now (hopefully) in the final phase of our stint on the hard (such and appropriate term), getting more done on land than we planned due to our engine not yet being in. Lisa is progressing on a multitude of fronts that will make our new home brighter, cleaner, cushier, and wiser. Meanwhile, I clean out old holding tanks (getting rid of other peoples shit, one small bucket at a time), play with electrical wires and gadgets (every new boat owner has to change some of the layout of previous owners...), and fix plumbing. Together, we are gittin' er done.
The engine supposedly goes in this week. If all goes well we'll launch Rumiko next Monday while Lisa's mom, Rumiko's namesake, and dad are visiting us here in La Paz.
1) The Navy won 2 out of 3, the best 'our side' has ever done. We then went on to play many many more games, from 3-on-3 to 6-on-6, and drank many beers with them. An excellent time, and a great Spanish lesson.
2) The next day we played the "employees" of the restaurant at which the games were held at (none of the players worked there), and got slaughtered 2 games to zilch. However, later, during the following hours of games and drinking, we had a match of 4-on-4, a strong four on both sides, with a wager - proposed by them - for the losers to go swimming in the ocean. We won handily.
3) Our public has spoken, and the font for Rumiko is Font #4 (see our previous posting for an example). This is the theory, anyway. We'll see how it turns out when Lisa actually tries to paint Rumiko in that font.
Now on to the main part of our life here - the Bercovich Boat Yard (Talleres Navales Bercovich).
Luckily, in a way we did not understand at first, our boat is located in a fully working - hard core Mexican Talleres Navales. They do good bottom work, so we will have them do the sand blast and bottom paint on Rumiko. We are right next to the roofed, un-walled, shop, two boats from the office, and are not close to the large gringo community living on their boats down the other end of the yard. Despite the toxic fumes emanating from the shop, our location has turned out to be a really good thing. The gringo community in the yard is composed mainly of talkers who work a bit, rather than the other way around. Also, we are next to the shop so we get the full shop experience (watching a master-of-all-trades do hard core welding, grinding, polishing, without ever wearing any protective gear like masks or glasses - even for welding), and our boat and tools are extremely safe.
While I just slandered the crowd of us-like folks, there are actuall
y some really neat people based here in the Bercovich yard. A lot of colorful folks, living lives that they have chosen - or at least they have chosen NOT to live the lives that were most evident for them. I am not sure anyone chooses to live in a boat yard. There is a grumpy old conservative that loves to shock folks with his bad taste humor and slanderous politics; there is the nice guy that bops around, living on his small boat then off to some friends in various Mexican villages; the woman that inherited 
the boat her brother died working on, and subsequently moved down and is slowly putting it together. There's also Eric, a kindred soul, Grand Canyon river guide for many years who is in a race with us to get his boat in the water - and who not only has great stories, but tells them extremely well. We'll write more about Eric in another posting. For us, Doug, the previous caretaker of our boat, great husband to Rae (who is great as well), and wealth of information, inspiration, humor, and all-too-many gifts (all which we are either in need of or glad to receive), is physically the closest to our boat, and now to our lives as well.The yard is owned by Abel Bercovich. Abel is known as an honest and reliable man who runs a competent working boat yard.
He has a very dry sense of humor, and rarely shows that he is aware of our existence. He has two brothers that also work there, Eduardo being the "working boss" of the crew. He shares the quiet manner, but to less extent, and has been very helpful with a number of projects that we needed assistance with. Christen is a young quiet man who works in the tool shop and does various odd jobs; Angel (who helped with o
ur propeller removal - see earlier post for his picture) and another guy seem to be the two most skilled general workers. Roberto is an older man that works some in the shop - but seems to be semi-retired. Then there is the primary shop guy - I would guess in his mid-fifties, that works without any protective gear as explained above. Vincente is the night and weekend watchman, lives in the yard, and is very friendly. In addition, there are another 3 to 5 workers that are less frequently seen in our area.
You may wonder what we are doing. . . well, the boat was is great shape, but still we have been working 4- to 9-hours-a-day for most of the past month (6 to 7 days-a-week). Cleaning - there was a bachelor hermit living on the boat for a year and a half - so that was a chunk. The various cushions - for sitting on and sleeping - needed cleaning or replacing. The bilge (the pit where all the gunk in a boat goes - gunk being a polite term) was cleaned and painted, as was the engine compartment. Lots of tracing electrical wires, removing some, redoing others, rerouting a lot. Painting this and that. Building the settee (couch) extension, so that our bed will be bigger (as wide as possible - the Sea of Cortez in the heat of the summer is known as the celibisea - "don't you dare get closer to me"). . . All of this is taking place in tighter-than-tight spots (requiring contortionist yoga - as Eric puts it), and requiring real care (it is a corrosive and wet environment that will bounce around hard on the water, and may go inverted).We are now (hopefully) in the final phase of our stint on the hard (such and appropriate term), getting more done on land than we planned due to our engine not yet being in. Lisa is progressing on a multitude of fronts that will make our new home brighter, cleaner, cushier, and wiser. Meanwhile, I clean out old holding tanks (getting rid of other peoples shit, one small bucket at a time), play with electrical wires and gadgets (every new boat owner has to change some of the layout of previous owners...), and fix plumbing. Together, we are gittin' er done.
The engine supposedly goes in this week. If all goes well we'll launch Rumiko next Monday while Lisa's mom, Rumiko's namesake, and dad are visiting us here in La Paz.
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